The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age [Hardcover]

Nathan Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 11, 2011

Dynamic young Stanford biologist Nathan Wolfe reveals the surprising origins of the world's most deadly viruses, and how we can overcome catastrophic pandemics.

In The Viral Storm, award-winning biologist Nathan Wolfe tells the story of how viruses and human beings have evolved side by side through history; how deadly viruses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the past; and why modern life has made our species vulnerable to the threat of a global pandemic.

Wolfe's research missions to the jungles of Africa and the rain forests of Borneo have earned him the nickname "the Indiana Jones of virus hunters," and here Wolfe takes readers along on his groundbreaking and often dangerous research trips—to reveal the surprising origins of the most deadly diseases and to explain the role that viruses have played in human evolution.

In a world where each new outbreak seems worse than the one before, Wolfe points the way forward, as new technologies are brought to bear in the most remote areas of the world to neutralize these viruses and even harness their power for the good of humanity. His provocative vision of the future will change the way we think about viruses, and perhaps remove a potential threat to humanity's survival.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] quietly terrifying book. . . . It’s hard not to feel a bit feverish at times while reading."--The Boston Globe

"One of the world’s foremost virus hunters."--Financial Times

"Wolfe makes a convincing case for the [viral pandemic] threat. . . . Sometimes the scariest thrillers are those that could play out in real life."--Science News

"An excellent piece of scientific gothic, rich in descriptions of the threat we face from emerging viruses and how we might prevent them from becoming pandemic. . . . This enjoyable, well researched and thought-provoking book shows that [Wolfe] has a clear vision of how pandemics occur in human populations."--Nature

"[An] engrossing and fast-paced chronicle of medical exploration and discovery."—Publishers Weekly

"Startling in its revelations of just how vulnerable we are to infectious outbreaks."--Book Page

"Wolfe’s message is both compelling and timely… Wolfe graphically illustrates how viruses can hitchhike their way from benign passenger to poison, from lone gunman to mass murderer. Luckily he and his international microbiologist cohorts are hot onto ways not only to track viral outbreaks and head them off but also convert them into human helpers—vaccines."—Booklist

"Highly recommend for all readers. This important book should be read by anyone wanting to stay informed on how global medical issues affect us all."—Library Journal

"From a well-traveled virologist, an eloquent argument for why we need better ways to predict and thus prevent major disease outbreaks… Wolfe’s wide experience confronting killer diseases in Africa and Asia makes for important, graphic reading and underscores his passion for prevention."—Kirkus Reviews

"By turns terrifying and comforting, The Viral Storm is a clear, riveting account of the threat of undiscovered viruses. They lurk in the blood of primates killed for bush meat, poised to hitchhike on global travelers, reaching major cities and blood supplies before there's even time to name them. Nathan Wolfe is saving the world from near-inevitable pandemic. That he had time to write a kick-ass book on top of all that makes me want to smack him."—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Packing for Mars

"Nathan Wolfe brilliantly explores the threat of pandemics, how they occur and why we should care. This book offers a warning—but also hope—to us all. The next pandemic is coming. How we deal with it is up to us. This is must reading for anyone who cares about their health, the health of their families and civilization as we know it."—Jeff Skoll, first President of eBay, Founder and Chairman of Participant Media, and Founder and Chairman, Skoll Global Threats Fund"Nathan Wolfe is a charismatic rising star of the medical world."—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse

"This is an astonishingly lucid book on an important topic. Deeply researched, yet effortlessly recounted, Wolfe's mix of biology, history, medicine, and first-hand experience is potent and irresistible. This is a book that you cannot put down. In the tradition of Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, Wolfe's work will change the way we imagine and patrol human epidemics."—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

 

About the Author

Nathan Wolfe is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and Director of Global Viral Forecasting, a pandemic early warning system which monitors the spillover of novel infectious agents from animals into humans. Wolfe has been published in or profiled by Nature, Science, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Wired, Discover, Scientific American, NPR, Popular Science, Seed, and Forbes. Wolfe was the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in 1997 and was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) International Research Scientist Development Award in 1999 and the prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2005.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; 1 edition (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780805091946
• ISBN-13: 978-0805091946
• ASIN: 0805091947
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #441,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and surprising! October 17, 2011

By Gabe

Format:Hardcover

A truly engaging book on a mostly unexplored form of life - microbes. Each chapter goes deeper into the history, power, uses, and misconceptions of viruses (but also bacteria and parasites). Wolfe also uncoveres the long co-evolution of humans and viruses - he even argues that humans were once close to extinction. And who knew viruses could be "gentle"!

A great read, an astonishing subject, a surprisingly exciting book.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really what I expected November 17, 2011

By Justin

Format:Hardcover

More of a Nathan Wolfe Autobiography / Primate Evolution book than anything else. Not to say that it isn't interesting in it's own right (and Dr. Wolfe has certainly had an amazing career), but this is far from what I expected based on the summaries. He also seems to focus on other infectious agents as much as viruses and more on how to monitor them than their history or pandemic potential. While reading the first 100 pages or so I was pretty sure I picked up a book about primate behavior instead of viruses. That's a bit much for a book of less than 250 pages total.

I personally didn't find it very engaging but it's not bad book by any means. Just don't be mislead by the title.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The first 35 pages are worth the price of the book December 24, 2011

By Beth E. Williams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I know enough about my fascination with viruses to know, as a non-scientist, my curiosity about them has more to do with philosophy than medicine but that may well be yet another reason for biologists (for just one group) to be equally ensnared by their subject.

The Virus, for its opportunism in the extreme (parasitical is too meager a description) and because its very nature is controversial (is it Life or isn't it? I agree with his footnote on the bottom of pg.8) can appear to be such a vast topic that no one author can be expected to resolve or ask or even comprehend all the questions. Wolfe, in his first 35 pages, does at least try - and it remains my favorite section of the book - his amazement with these microscopic life(?)forms is so engaging that if you didn't have a respect for them before you will have afterwards. And, if the next 300 or so pages that come after it were just "so-so" for me that is not the fault of Wolfe, he has a wide readership to appeal to and just because I am not particularly interested in bureaucracies, who got what grant to do what and where does not mean that these aren't valid sections for millions of others.

But those first 35 pages, yes, they are heady indeed, Wolfe is delightful in both his recognition of just what makes these viruses so shocking and where we fit in their world (ie."our bodies are their habitats," p.27), and his conclusion in the first chapter, (Viral Planet) says it all: the viral world is the "new world," the last frontier of undiscovered life on our planet."

Perhaps it is the Lewis Thomas phenomena, a flashpoint where scientist and non-scientist can co-exist in a mutual relationship of shared passion, be it horror or admiration, or both? There is much to admire in what a Virus is, or has been, or will be, and if I took nothing else away from Wolfe's book it is that "we" are (numerically) a speck of life within a planetary Viral soup. These life forms are so relentlessly efficient, competent and resourceful that even bacteria (which we tend to think of as quite accomplished all on their own) are covered in viruses! And it goes far beyond just the numbers, "we" are not as dominant as we like to think we are, and Wolfe's presentation of the Viral world inverted or turned inside out my naive and humanistic vanity that on this planet "we" are the masters. We survive because it suits the Virus to help or even make sure that we survive; even the health of the oceans and other aquatic regions are dependent upon viruses to reduce and recycle carbon by destroying bacteria there; as with carbon itself, without viruses "we" would not be here either.

Aside from these initial pages I also found worthy discussions on bioterrorism and "bioerror" (see chap.8 Viral Rush) and the Gentle Virus (chap.11) which just reinforces my analogy that we are closer to being the non-thinking but accommodating host than they are haphazard non-cognitive scraps of DNA/RNA parasite!

Give the first 35 pages a good read, and be prepared to lose that sense of superiority over these titans of the microscopic world.